BEAVER CREEK, Colorado—Kristi Noem watched the GOP debate, and she was particularly unimpressed by the candidates competing for the Republican nomination, some of whom could very well be her competition.

“The first 15 minutes of that debate were extremely discouraging for me,” the South Dakota governor told RealClearPolitics, adding, “I do not conduct my job interviews for staff that way.”

It was a notable choice of words given that Donald Trump dismissed the debate as little more than an audition for his potential running mate and because Noem has expressed interest in joining the ticket of the former president as he seeks the GOP nomination a third time.

“We are electing the leader of the free world,” Noem told RCP during an on-stage interview at a policy summit hosted by the conservative Steamboat Institute. “When I watched what happened on that stage, the yelling and the lack of respect for the moderators, for me it was very disheartening.”

The immediate bickering, she said, “made it hard to watch the rest.”

Republican politicos, meanwhile, are watching Noem. The governor will welcome Trump to South Dakota next month for the state party’s annual fundraiser as VP speculation continues to swirl. The governor developed close ties to Trump during his time in office, has built out her own national profile, and is reportedly one of four female potential running mates in the mix.

Noem delighted Trump World when she recently told a local radio station that she didn’t “see a path to victory for anybody else with him in the race.” But on Saturday, she demonstrated a willingness to split with Trump.

“No, I would not have kept Dr. Fauci around,” Noem said when asked about the doctor who became the face of the White House COVID task force and who was an early architect of the lockdown strategy, adding, “Ultimately, Dr. Fauci had the authority he was given.”

Things looked much different in South Dakota during the pandemic. Noem did not lock down the state and spoke out publicly against mask mandates across the country, even going so far as encouraging the Sturgis motorcycle rally to continue as planned at the height of the pandemic. That focus on protecting the most vulnerable, rather than reducing overall cases, while keeping the state up and running has endeared her to conservatives.

Was it a mistake for Trump not to tell Fauci, “You’re fired”?

“I do believe so,” Noem replied. “But I also think that a president has certain information that makes it to his level and doesn’t have certain information that makes it to his level.”

The governor recalls raising the issue with the Trump White House while advocating for a less restrictive approach like the one that was on display in South Dakota. Looking back at the chaotic early days of the pandemic, she added that she “felt like many times that President Trump didn’t necessarily have a team around him that gave him the information he needed.”

Noem seemed to place some of the blame for Fauci’s elevation on former Vice President Pence, noting that as head of the COVID task force, he “was making a lot of decisions on who spoke at press conferences and who we gave credibility to.”

While rivals of the former president, most notably Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, see Trump’s handling of COVID as a liability among conservatives in a primary, Republicans increasingly worry about another weakness, this one in a general election: winning back the suburban women that Trump lost in 2020 and would need to defeat President Biden in 2024.

Noem could help shore up that demographic. She has demonstrated a willingness to embrace both economic and cultural issues. The governor won healthy applause from an audience full of conservative donors, for instance, when she said that transgender athletes like Lia Thomas “would not be allowed” to compete against biological women in K-12 and college sports under a law she signed in 2022.

Some on the right fear that an overemphasis on cultural issues might alienate moderates and end up costing Republicans. “Social issues are incredibly important. We must fight and win the culture war,” said Kari Lake earlier this year. Lake, the failed Arizona Senate candidate who is also reportedly on Trump’s short list of VP picks, added, “But the 2024 election will be all about fixing our economy and preventing World War 3.”

Noem rejected that dichotomy. She said national security ought to be “the biggest consideration” as voters make their decision because “we’re in such a dangerous unprecedented time,” and economics will be front and center because “families are being devastated” by the policies of the current White House. “But the social issues just are going to be a factor whether Kari Lake says they are or aren't, whether anybody else in this country says they are or aren’t,” Noem said before adding that Democrats will force that kind of debate and use it “as a weapon to destroy people.” Her prescription for her party as they head into a presidential election year: “Be prepared to talk about them all because they’re going to be used.”

Trump’s compounding legal indictments, stemming from his conduct before and after the 2020 election, threaten to cast a longer shadow than any particular policy. At the GOP debate, candidates were asked if they believed that Pence was right to certify the election despite Trump’s wishes.

Asked if she thought the former vice president did the right thing, Noem replied, “I believe he did the right thing. I do.” But the governor continued, “I think the fact that he still feels the need to be so crabby about it is sad.”

“He obviously is feeling the criticism and the attacks, but if you're a patriot, and you love this country, you’d be satisfied in the fact that you know you did the right thing,” she added.

Trump places a premium on loyalty, a quality that Pence exuded until the very end when he refused to go along with the former president’s plot to overturn the election. Loyalty, no doubt, would again be a determining quality in whom he chooses as a running mate if he wins the nomination. On Saturday, Noem declined to go into detail about her conversations with Trump, other than to say the two “talk quite often” and to deny that they had broached the topic of the vice presidency.

The two will be together in person next week at the South Dakota GOP’s Monuments Dinner. A source close to the governor speculated that she would welcome Trump to the stage for his keynote address and when the two join hands, “it will look like a presidential ticket.”

For now, though, that possibility is purely hypothetical. Trump is the frontrunner but not yet the nominee. Noem would only go so far Saturday as to reiterate that she’d consider an offer if one was made. As she makes that consideration, RCP asked, was there anything about the very public, very ugly divorce between Trump and Pence that gave her pause?

“Well yes because I’ve always been the boss,” Noem laughed. She has known since she was young, the governor said, that “my personality is I have to be the one making the decisions.”